Unlicensed doesn't mean unloved

Today's post is partly prompted by seeing some graded cards for sale and wondering who is sending cards that are routinely ignored off for grading.

Card Number 643: Panini Prizm, 2013; #176

Panini produce Prizm cards across a number of sports. In baseball where they don't have a licence, the cards end up looking like this, with every hint of a team logo airbrushed off the picture. 

This is the plain base version of these cards. Every base card is shiny, but the main attraction of packs of Prizm cards are multiple colour parallels and refractor-style "prizms" that are often numbered. These silver base cards are used to pad out the packs inbetween the rarer cards. They are basically filler. The sets all look very samey as well - compare this one with the cards from 2014 and 2015.

The back reuses the same airbrushed photo as the front.

The factoid on the back is about Tony's stand-out season in 1987, when he picked up his second batting title and stole lots of bases. 

Apart from the lack of licensing, there's nothing particularly objectionable about this card. But recently I saw a graded version of this base card on a popular auction site with a start price of $50. It was only graded a 9/10 as well. 

I've seen a few discussions about the backlog at the grading houses, and collectors blaming people submitting all kinds of low value cards for grading. I think that happens because the grading houses accept batches of cards for grading so people chuck in extra ones to round out the batch - which, ironically, would make a card like this "filler" twice over. Otherwise, I'm not sure what the thought process is behind sending this card in for grading. 

Although, if you are going to encase your cards in plastic, you may as well pick cards that nobody else will bother getting graded. One of the big measures in graded cards is the 'population', that is, the number of cards graded at a particular level. In the long run maybe this card will be "rarer" than some of the higher value licensed base rookie cards that are getting "slabbed" by lots of people as they come straight out of packs.

Of course, whether anyone will want this card in a graded sleeve so much that they would pay $50 for it is another question. I rather doubt they would. My (ungraded) copy was in a job lot of Tony Gwynn cards, padding out the lot. The previous ones I have acquired have also been part of lots. 

I don't know anybody who collects Panini Prizm baseball cards or is trying to put together a set. There doesn't seem to be much value attached to this filler card - until it's graded, at which point, a collector is essentially paying $50 for a plastic sleeve.

As for my collection, this card sits in a shiny row of three Prizm base cards from consective years in the Panini section of my binder. I won't be sending it off for grading any time soon.

Total: 643 cards

Future collecting focus

A few posts back I mentioned how I was thinking about my collection of Tony Gwynn cards and what the next step for me would be.

When I started this blog I had 195 cards and my aim was to reach 394. It's fair to say I smashed that. I  added 374 cards to the collection from my blog launch date to the end of 2020.

What started out as one binder of cards has expanded into five binders, which are varying degrees of full.

There are getting on for 12,000 Tony Gwynn cards listed on Trading Card Database. It would be possible to aim for adding 394 new cards to my collection every year. Possible, but not very sensible. I have other things happening in my life and I spend a lot of time looking for cards as it is. (Although, if I did decide to do this, I have already reached 50 cards in 2021.)

Recently I have wondered whether to try and collect 394 cards per decade. Currently my collection stands at 619 cards split by decade as follows:

1980s - 72 (first card = 1983)

1990s - 329

2000s - 125

2010s - 55

2020s - 38 (after only 2 years of the decade)

The 90s would almost be complete if I chose to do that. However there are a couple of years at the start of the 80s that will always be empty. Tony's first card was a TCMA minor league card released in 1982. It's on my wishlist, but there are still only eight years in the 80s when Tony had cards released.  

If we were going by career decade rather than calendar decade, then we would be looking at different breakdowns of years and cards, as follows:

1982-1991 - 104

1992- 2001 - 382

2002 - 2011 - 46

2012 - 2021 - 87

There's a 'career decade' there that covers the most prolific era in card collecting - the ten years after the UD Boundary is the equivalent of the Cambrian Explosion in card terms with the rapid expansion of companies, sets and rapid evolution in baseball card techniques. So, it's not surprising that well over half of the cards in my collection are from that 'decade'. 

Meanwhile the most sparse decade, 2002-11, would lose two years with a lot of cards, and gain two very poorly represented years in return. The post-2012 decade would be boosted by adding 2020, with its 35 cards. 2022 would be the start of a new decade and I could say that I'm only going to collect cards issued in the first forty years after Tony's first card. But I can't even kid myself that I have the willpower to not buy any of the cards that will inevitably be released next year.

I'm hesitant to go down the route of career decades otherwise I am going to be stuck hunting for cards from after Tony retired. Although, that would be a problem with calendar decades as well.

Maybe, and here's a strange thought, I don't need a numerical target at all. 

If anyone has any bright ideas, then please leave a comment!

One card only: Price guide in your pocket

I have never seen a copy of Sports Collector's Digest, but Wikipedia reliably informs me that it once had a key role connecting collectors and helping them to buy, sell and trade cards. Like all magazines, the Internet has hit it hard. At it's peak the weekly mag was over 300 pages, but more recent copies have had fewer than 40 pages. It also has its own website with price guides and so on.

But back in the 1990s, SCD also produced their own cards. They weren't licensed (as far as I can tell) and they were produced on rather flimsy card. Billed as 'pocket price guides' they were freebies to promote the magazine.

Card Number 522: Sports Collector's Digest, 1993; #51

The card design is reminiscent of those produced by actual card companies. 

The back is a real mix of biographical data, rookie card prices, and a weird cartoon tied to a factoid. The biographical data has a mistake in it. Long Beach Poly was Tony's high school, not his college.

1993 was at the peak of the first boom of the baseball card collecting hobby and the prices on the card reflect that. Tony's 1983 cards from Donruss and Topps (both of which appear in my second ever blog post) are valued at $25 and $40 respectively. They haven't held their value as I'm pretty sure you could pick them both up for less than that now, 27 years later.

Tony's DonRuss card from 1984 is on my wanted list, but $18 would be well over market value now, and I don't think his Fleer card from 1984 would realise $12. If my cards were mint and still worth these values I would have $77 worth of cards sat in my binders. My cards are in good shape but the values aren't.

This card didn't cost me much either. It was an add-in on a purchase from my main card supplier, Gawain. It feels nicely ironic that it is still changing hands as a freebie bonus.

Total:522 cards

Back to 1987 (and a story of set completion)

This story starts when I was 10 years old (and just about to turn 11) and my parents took me and my brother to Florida. We went to Walt Disney World. We went to the Everglades. We went to Thomas Edison's House. We learned that Americans had donuts for breakfast (!) 

And we bought baseball cards. Topps Baseball 1987 to be precise. 

I've always loved that set and would often look at the stack of cards we brought home. Over the years I added to that stack as I found 1987 cards in joblots and so on. A few years ago I bought a large number off Facebook Marketplace, and I've been filling in my remaining cards ever since.

My completion story started about 10 days ago when Brian from the UK baseball card collectors Facebook group, advertised a stack of Topps cards from 1984. I like the design of the 1984 cards but they are a bit thin on the ground in the UK. They date from just before the junk wax explosion, which really took off at the end of the 80s. 

Brian described the cards as a 'starter' stack and it only took me a few minutes to decide that I would like them. He then asked if there was anything else I collected. I said Tony Gwynn and he sent me a picture of Tony's base card from 1987 - the first card I ever featured on this blog! I explained how I had been collecting the 1987 cards since, well, 1987, and how I was one card away from completing the set.

He asked which card that was, and I told him it was Pete Rose's card, number 200 in the set. Then Brian sent me a picture of the card and said he would include it!

He also then messaged me a few hours later with another card featuring Tony that I didn't have, and offered to include it in the package too - that was the All Star card of Tony and Albert Belle that I blogged about a week ago.

The cards arrived securely packed inside a Kellogg's Pop Tarts box (not shown).

And here's Pete!

It's got a wax stain or gum stain on the back - authenticity!

There is a connection between Pete Rose and Tony Gwynn. On the night Tony Gwynn made his debut, Pete Rose was playing first base for the Phillies. Tony's first hit was a double so he ran right past Pete and onto second. But Tony's second hit that night was a single and after he reached first base, Pete shook his hand and said "Don't go catching me up all in one night!" 

But here's the twist in my collecting tale. After a couple of days celebrating completing the set, including telling my mum all about it when we had one of our regular phone chats, I started to put the set into card pages. And then I discovered somewhere I had made a mistake. The set wasn't complete! I was still missing one card - #486, Otis Nixon. 

I put an appeal out on the Facebook group and Brian said he also had a copy of Otis's card and would send it to me. (I was able to help him out with some dupe 1987 cards for his set-build in return.) A few days later an envelope plopped through the letterbox, and inside was Otis.

I don't have a story to connect Otis with Tony Gwynn. And I don't have any Topps cards of Tony from 1987 to blog. But I do have some cards from 1987 that haven't featured on the blog yet. This has been a super-long post, so I'm going to wait and post them tomorrow.

In the meantime I'm still feeling incredibly happy to have completed this set 33 years after that family holiday!

Total: 515 cards (none added to the total today!)

Sharing the Spotlight - Tony and Albert

Today's card arrived via Brian from the UK baseball card collectors Facebook group. It was part of a bigger trade that is a longer story, which I might tell another time. 

Card Number 501: Topps, 1995; #389

For a couple of sets in the mid-90s, Topps paired up players from the All Star Game on cards. Tony shares this one with Albert Belle from the Cleveland Indians.

The photo makes me chuckle because it looks like Tony and Albert have had a spat. Tony has his arms crossed and looks like he's giving Albert the cold shoulder, while Albert defiantly sits there ignoring him in turn. 

On the back there's a seasonal breakdown for both players. You will notice that both their totals before and after the All Star Break are radically different. That's because the season ended in August when the players went on strike.

Albert was a consistent selection for All-Star teams for five years in a row (1993-97) during his eleven-year Major League career. He was a noted power hitter and is the only player to score 50 doubles and 50 home runs in the same season. He averaged 120 RBI a season and was the first player to sign a $10,000,000 contract. And, of course, he got to share a baseball card with Tony Gwynn!

Thank you for the card, Brian!

Total: 501 cards